X-Men

There are a plethora, nay El Guapo, two plethoras of games out there that use the X-Men license in some way. Some of them are good. Some are pretty bad. And most, like most games in general, fall somewhere in that mediocre middle range. This arcade classic is one such game.

X-Men for the arcade was pretty much your standard beat-em-up game, albeit with a couple twists. First, you were using X-Men. Secondly, there were 6 different joysticks for the 6 mutants you could control, though only 4 people could play simultaneously (on most machines...some allowed the full 6, and some versions only allowed 2). Those six mutants are: Cyclops, Colossus, Wolverine, Storm, Dazzler, and Nightcrawler.

Now, I know what all of you are thinking. "Who in the world is Dazzler?" To be honest, I've beaten this game numerous times and I still have no idea. She's kind of like a blonde Jubilee with a marginally more useful mutant power. Anyway, you and your friends (should you have any) are charged by Professor X with the task of, well, see above.

And that's just the first of a number of alarmingly poor, and therefore hilarious, lines of dialogue in the game. Professor X has more than his fair share, with gems such as "Go and rescue Kitty from the cave!" or "Magneto is in another place.....GO, X-MEN!" It's kind of like the arcade beat-em-up version of "The princess is in another castle!" Only at least the guys in Mario didn't have herpes.

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Anyway, back to gameplay for a moment. Though there are six heroic mutants to choose, not all really warrant any true consideration, since the difference between them boils down to their mutant powers. The mutant power mechanic is interesting here. Using one consumes three bars of your life gauge, unless you have only three or less remaining, at which point you may only use as many as you have "bonus orbs," received for killing bosses. Because mutant powers are so devastating, this prevents people from just spamming them and beating the game. Or at least, doing so without a lot of quarters.

So Cyclops will get you an optic blast, as expected, that takes out enemies directly in front of him. Wolverine clinks his claws together and stuff in front of him dies, too. Dazzler shoots a pink bomb of energy that lands across the screen, hitting enemies at a distance. Storm launches a tornado that covers the whole vertical length of the screen, but can't hit behind her. Nightcrawler teleports randomly around the screen, destroying whatever he happens to touch.

Of course, none of them really hold a candle in my book to Colossus, the only real man of the bunch. Biceps of steel. Literally. The programmers of the game realized that his mutant power didn't extend beyond his steel skin, so pressing the mutant power button wouldn't really do much good. At a loss, they decided to simply have him flex and roar, causing anything in the vicinity to explode.

Aside from this, there are only two other buttons in the game: jump and attack. Attack does a variety of punches and kicks, depending on your character and your positioning as regards the enemy. Throws are possible too, naturally. All in all the fighting aspect of the game works well, despite a few annoying spots in which it is impossible to get out alive. But they're few enough that the flaw is easily forgiven, particularly when experiencing the game with some buddies. It's a co-op to beat the game, but a sort of contest too, to get the most kills.

But then there's the plot. Or, at least, I think it's a plot. Actually, I'm not really sure what's going on at any point during the entire game. At first, there is simply an army of mini-Sentinels attacking some city, and it's your job to stop them. Ok, cool. You kill a couple classic X-Men villains along the way, shut down the robot factory, all good. But then Professor X gets kidnapped and you have to travel to some jungle island to save him. And here you get more mini-Sentinels, as you soon discover every level will simply palette swap them and call it a new enemy. The final level featured golden ones, apparently to indicate their supposed "difficulty" to dispatch.

At one point during this jungle adventure, Magneto appears to blast you off a cliff, while exclaiming "Hahaha, X-Men. Welcome to DIE!" This game doesn't get much mention in the way of bad translation, and maybe it's no Zero Wing, but sheesh. Many strange enemies and bad lines later, you eventually kill a boss to have Professor X congratulate you as follows: "X-Men. Nice job. Magneto is over there. Follow me!" You, being an idiot, follow him, only to find out it's actually Mystique and now you have to fight through a whole 'nother level of little robot things. Way to go.

Later, when it seems like you're making headway, and it seems like the game has fully embraced its own personality, you are given a new telepathic order. "X-Men, X-Men! Magneto is planning to attack Earth from his asteroid base. You must foil his plan before it's too late. Go after the giant Sentinel!" And just like that, the game degenerates into another let's-fight-in-space-because-it's-the-future sort of thing. It seems to be the fallback for when designers run out of ideas but need to crank out some more gameplay time.

Finally, after killing countless Sentinel whelplings, you get to fight Magneto in the epic showdown. This fight isn't for the faint-at-heart, as he will throw taunts at you the entire duration of the battle. These include, so far as I can tell, the following utterances of an obvious evil genius:

• "I am Magneto! Master of magnet! Hahahaha!"
• "I am Magneto! You are nothing!"
• "Come, X-Chicken!"
• "You shall meet with my wrath!!"
• "I kill you!"
• "Dead! Hahahahaa!"

Upon defeating Magneto, you are told that you have had success and saved the Earth, but that wait! The game is not over yet. Expecting some sort of dramatic epilogue, you wait somewhat eagerly for your new challenge, only to find that you're now back at the beginning of the first level! Now it'd be one thing if this happened Legend of Zelda style, so you went through the game again on a more challenging difficulty. But that's not the case in the least. I suppose it's kind of them to let you continue to play out any accrued credits, but you're making me replay levels thinking there's some light at the end of the tunnel, when there's really not. In the end, it frustrated me enough that I decided to start smashing the gonads of my foes. And you know, it really made me feel a whole lot better, both about life and this game.

If you're a fan of bad translations, decent beat-em-ups, and a whole lot of random screaming, X-Men is right up your alley.

Bottom Line: 13/20